The Long Dark News

Hello everyone,

We're really sorry to everyone who has experienced unfortunate Sprain activity since we released STEADFAST RANGER. We thought it might be useful to explain a bit about what's been going on.

• The "old" Sprain system calculated sprain chance by taking a slope angle, applying a % chance of sprain based on a base value, and adding more risk as the angle increased. We also increased the risk based on if you were Sprinting, Encumbered, or Exhausted. The fact that you didn't know what slope angle might cause a sprain when walking on it, was a large contributor to the sense of getting surprise sprains because you had no way of knowing you were "at risk".

• In STEADFAST RANGER, we added the Slope indicator to tell you when you are "at risk". The idea here was to give you a sense that you might get a sprain if you didn't change your behaviour, i.e. find a safer path. The Slope indicator doesn't guarantee you will get a Sprain, but it tells you that you are in a place where you MIGHT get one.

• There was a bug in the 1.48 release of STEADFAST RANGER where we were calculating Slope Risk modifiers for Encumbrance, Exhaustion, and Sprinting, when on FLAT surfaces. This meant that over time, even when walking on flat (non-sloped) surfaces, you might end up with a Sprain, if you were Encumbered, Exhausted, or Sprinting. Since we check on an interval, over time you are highly likely to get one. THIS WAS A BUG AND SHOULD BE FIXED IN THIS LATEST HOTFIX.

• Some people found the "flashing" warning exclamation to be anxiety-inducing so we removed it. The Slope indicator itself should be sufficient warning.

• Another thing we added in STEADFAST RANGER was a "Sprain Risk" affliction to Status. This is only meant to appear when you are Exhausted or Encumbered, to indicate that you are at greater risk of Sprains due to being in these states. This risk should only apply when you are walking on valid slopes. It does not mean you are generally at risk of getting sprains. You MUST be on a valid slope for Exhaustion, Encumbrance, or Sprinting to trigger a sprain. Some people are confusing the Slope indicator with the Sprain Risk affliction in Status, and they are not the same thing.

• There was a bug where the SPRAIN RISK affliction would appear any time you transitioned to a new scene. We've fixed that in this latest Hotfix.

Please keep in mind that the new Sprain system means you are now more knowingly at risk of getting sprains than you were before STEADFAST RANGER. You might have become accustomed to spidering along the environment or walking up (or down) slopes that should have triggered sprains but didn't for a variety of reasons. This means that you may have to ADAPT your traversal of the world. It means there may now be paths that are more dangerous than they were before.

Keep in mind that the Slope indicator is meant to be a warning, similar to Weak Ice. If you back away from the path you are on, you can avoid the risk of getting a sprain. If you persist on a path or slope where you see the Slope indicator, you accept the risk that you might get a sprain. It's in your power to decide where you want to travel, and how you want to get there. You may have gotten used to taking risky shortcuts that now have a more visible cost associated with them, whereas that risk was hidden before.

Now that we'll have the Sprain system working as originally intended for STEADFAST RANGER, we'll continue listening to feedback from our players. Phase 2 will be to consider modifying the tuning on either the Slope Angle required to trigger sprains, or the probability of getting sprains over time when travelling on a slope, but we don't want to make those changes until we're first sure people are playing the system as it was intended. Changing too many things at once makes it difficult to know what is working and what isn't.

Thanks for reading and we hope these fixes improve the Sprains "situation" for you.

- The Hinterland Team




• Fixed issue where revised Sprain system could trigger sprains on flat surfaces when Encumbered, Sprinting, or Exhausted.

• Fixed issue where Sprain Risk affliction indicator would appear on every scene transition.

• Removed flashing exclamation mark on Slope indicator due to causing widespread anxiety amongst our community. Let's face it, we could all use a little less anxiety.
• Tuned Revolver effectiveness when used against Moose (reduced) and reduced critical chance against Bears.

• Fixed issue where text was missing for the Small Arms (Revolver) research book.

• Fixed issue where players could not dismount from rope on upper cliff edge in an Ice Cave (Hushed River Valley region).

Hello community,

We hotfixed The Long Dark to v1.48.1 [47676] to address a crashing issue on PC.

If you still encounter issues while playing The Long Dark please visit our Support Portal: http://hinterlandgames.com/support

To stay-up-to-date with news and information about The Long Dark and Hinterland, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Twitter (Game | Studio).

If you have any other question or are just curious to know more about the game, please also consider joining our weekly Milton Mailbag Q&A: thelongdark.com/mailbag




• [All] Fixed issue causing crash to desktop on PC.

Hello community,

We’ve just updated The Long Dark to v1.48 [47675] — STEADFAST RANGER.

For a detailed breakdown of the new features and changes, please review this update video. Full Release Notes are available below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIwjUU_6DIY

New! Revolver — A close-quarters defensive tool against hostile wildlife.

New! Birch Bark Tea — A slow-gain condition restoration item brewed from a renewable natural resource.

New! Energy Drink — Quick-shot Stamina and Fatigue boost, useful for getting yourself out of a variety of bad situations.

New! Improvised Cloth Wraps — Stave off Frostbite on your Head and Hands with these basic wraps.

Overhaul! Rifle & Shooting Gameplay — Completely overhauled shooting and aiming mechanics for the Rifle and other ranged tools.

Overhaul! Sprain System — Improved Sprain gameplay dynamics and first aid solutions.

…and much more.



You’ll find the complete changelist for the Update below. Please be aware there may be WINTERMUTE story spoilers in the changelist.

If you encounter issues while playing The Long Dark please visit our Support Portal.

To stay-up-to-date with news and information about The Long Dark and Hinterland, sign up for our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter (studio | game).




Known Crash

• We are working with Unity to resolve a known, rare crash in the engine. This crash appears to only affect Windows and Mac players, although it may appear on other platforms. The crash seems to be a memory issue that is triggered by transitioning between scenes. We will release a fix for the crash as soon as we’re able to diagnose the root cause. In the mean time, we recommend you Save Often (in WINTERMUTE) or Rest Often (in Survival; Resting triggers a save). For more information, please refer to our Support Portal.


General Fixes

• General performance improvements across the game.

• Upgraded to a new version of Unity, enabling widespread improvements across the game.

• Fixed issue that restricted the game’s framerate to 120fps (on applicable systems).

• Streamlined the information appearing in players’ session output logs, to aid with support queries.


General Art

• [Enviro] Numerous optimizations to improve performance.

• [Enviro] Fixed numerous issues causing the player to become stuck in the terrain.

• [Enviro] Fixed numerous issues allowing the player to get outside the intended play area.

• [Enviro] Fixed numerous issues causing objects to clip and float in the world.

• [Enviro] Fixed numerous issues causing stretched or missing textures.

• [Enviro] Fixed issue causing lighting hotspots in the Bear Cave in WINTERMUTE Episode Two.

• [Enviro] Updated LOD to reduce popping on buildings and cliffs.

• [Enviro] Fixed issue causing hinges to appear on the same side for both exterior and interior doors.

• [Enviro] Updated transition zone entrance from Mountain Town to Mystery Lake to be more visible to the player.

• [Enviro] Updated flags to animate.

• [Enviro] Fixed numerous issues causing unlit textures.

• [Enviro] Fixed issue causing Cat Tails to appear out of alignment during their animation.

• [Enviro] Fixed issue causing inverted snow textures on trees.

• [Enviro] Updated numbers on lock boxes in the Milton Credit Union bank.


User Interface

• [UI] Updated “Disable HUD” setting to remove object labels (useful for game footage capture).

• [UI] Updated various text localizations.

• [UI] Fixed various overlapping UI elements in all languages

• [UI] Fixed issue causing mission sub-objectives to overlap with the next line.

• [UI] Fixed issue causing the “Archivist” badge to always appear as Complete.

• [UI] Updated various missing subtitles.

• [UI] Fixed issue causing a rounding error in Imperial Units when Melting snow.

• [UI] Fixed issue causing incorrect scroll bar alignment on the Stats screen in the Journal.

• [UI] Fixed issue causing the Scent Indicator to not always appear on the Status screen.

• [UI] Fixed issue causing the Radial Menu to inconsistently show the correct number of Light Sources in the Backpack.

• [UI] Fixed issue causing sub-objective text to overlap in certain Challenge Modes.

• [UI] Fixed issues causing the Stone ammo counter to be missing from the HUD.

* [UI] Fixed issue causing the Milton Water Tower icon to appear in the wrong location on the Map.

• [UI] Fixed issue where the player was unable to add potable Water to the Radial Menu after dropping the Water and drinking from it.

• [UI] Added an Accessible Struggle option, allowing players to select between Tap to Win and Hold to Win options.

• [UI] Updated the Weak Ice indicator.

• [UI] Added a new Slope indicator to warn players when they are traversing slopes that are steep enough to cause Sprains.


WINTERMUTE

• [WINTERMUTE] Made several updates to the Bear Spear encounters in Episode Two, including adding a checkpoint and streamlining the final Cave encounter.

• [WINTERMUTE] Polish pass on various cinematics and dialogues.

• [WINTERMUTE] Updated tutorials to reflect gameplay modifications introduced in this update.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed various issues with subtitle typos and timing.

• [WINTERMUTE] Updated description for the side mission “Basics of Survival: Find and harvest some medicinal flora native to Great Bear Island.”

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing the Milton Credit Union bank vault door to play a closing animation when reloading your game, if the player was standing in front.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing a black screen to appear if a dialogue pop-up occurred during a cinematic.

• [WINTERMUTE] Updated Medicinal Flora tutorial text with additional details for clarity.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed script issue where the Carter Dam Control Room door cinematic wouldn’t play during The Wounded Trapper mission in Episode Two.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing players to be pushed into another room when opening the vault door in the Milton Credit Union.

• [WINTERMUTE] Numerous updates to Wildlife pathfinding.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing Blueprints to disappear from the Journal between Episodes One and Two. This fix is retroactive and will resolve it for players already impacted by the issue.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing players to become stuck in the floor if they loaded a game after saving it at the exact time the Milton Credit Union vault door was unlocked.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing overlapping text when hovering over a mission objective on the Map.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing Jeremiah to clip through his bed when reloading a save at the beginning of Episode Two.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issues that allowed players to get on top of the burnt Schoolhouse in Milton.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue that kept the Bear Spear from appearing properly in the Journal after examining it.

* [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing players to spawn in the wrong location if they reloaded a game saved immediately after the first Bear encounter in Episode Two.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing players to spawn in the wrong location if they reloaded a game saved while falling from a rope.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing mismatched values to appear for collected wood in the Journal, and when inspecting Grey Mother’s Firewood Bin.

• [WINTERMUTE] Fixed issue causing Milton Knowledge Items in the Journal to update incorrectly.


Survival Mode

• [Custom Mode] Fixed issue causing certain combinations of Custom Mode settings to generate an invalid sharing code.

• [Custom Mode] Fixed issue causing incorrect container loot to appear in Custom Mode.

• [Survival Mode] Fixed issue where Forging actions were not being interrupted when the Forge ran out of fuel.

* [Survival Mode] Fixed issue causing a partially-crafted Survival Bow to be usable if it was picked up while a completed Bow was equipped.

• [Survival Mode] Updated the Cold Fusion Feat description to properly reflect Air Temperature bonus.

• [Survival Mode] Updated medicinal Tea so it now acts like a First Aid item if a treatable Affliction is present. Otherwise it will still work as a Food item.

• [Survival Mode] Fixed issue where the Archery Skill Bonus was not applying reduced Arrow Condition loss correctly.

• [Survival Mode] Fixed issue causing some lockers to display the “locked” icon incorrectly.


Challenge Mode

• [Hunted] Fixed issue causing the Old Bear to clip through trees when fleeing.

• [Hunted] Updated Deer carcass placement.

• [Archivist] Fixed issue causing the sub-objective to update incorrectly after collecting the Buffer Memory from the Milton Post Office.


All Game Modes

• [All] Fixed issue where the fade to black transition would not appear correctly when exiting to the Main Menu

• [All] Fixed numerous pathing issues in the world due to missing nav mesh.

• [All] Fixed issue where Water in the Backpack would be consumed when drinking Water from the Cooking Screen.

* [All] Fixed issue causing audio for feeding Wolves to play even when the player wasn’t near one.

• [All] Fixed issue causing chimney smoke to be visible when no fire was active inside a house.

• [All] Fixed issue causing ambient audio to cut off when entering a car.

• [All] Fixed issue causing the player to limp incorrectly after holstering a weapon while suffering from a Sprained Ankle.

* [All] Fixed issue causing the Storm Lantern extinguish animation to play after death, if players fell off a high cliff while holding a lit Lantern.

• [All] Fixed issue where the player was unable to extinguish a Storm Lantern if they opened the Radial Menu while placing it.

• [All] Fixed issue where “Worn Thermal Underwear” appeared as “New Thermal Underwear” in the Backpack.

• [All] Fixed issue that kept the player from fighting back during a Struggle if they were attacked while Repairing clothing.

• [All] Fixed issue causing muffled dialogue VO after firing a Rifle indoors.

• [All] Adjusted the amount on Condition decay on the Bedroll when it is left outside.

• [All] Fixed issue where the Wolf growl audio was missing in some scenarios.

• [All] Fixed issue causing absent wind audio when standing outside a cave entrance.

• [All] Fixed issue where the screen could become blurry during Wolf Struggles.

• [All] Added dialogue VO for quartering Wildlife.


Xbox One-Specific Issues

• [Xbox] Fixed issue where the game would no longer update information in the gamercard after resuming from standby.


Steam-Specific Issues

• [UI] Fixed issue where an incorrect mouse icon would appear when using left-handed mouse settings.

• [UI] Added scrolling with the keyboard arrow keys for the Buffer Memory screen interfaces discovered in-game during an Aurora.

• [General] Fixed issue causing graphical corruption when playing in OpenGL on an Nvidia GPU.





If you encounter issues while playing The Long Dark please visit our Support Portal.

To stay-up-to-date with news and information about The Long Dark and Hinterland, sign up for our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter (studio | game).

Hello community,

We're excited to share the news that our next update to The Long Dark's Survival Mode, STEADFAST RANGER, will launch this Monday, May 6th (Pacific).

The update will be accompanied by a nearly 10-minute video outlining the various new additions and changes to the game, including details about the new Revolver. The update includes several new gameplay tools, improvements to existing systems, as well as a host of bug fixes and optimizations.

This update will apply to all in-progress Survival games and should not affect existing inventories or progress. The full release notes will be included in Monday's launch.

As always, we encourage you to start a new Survival game to fully experience the breadth of changes! So this weekend is a great time to wrap up your current game and get ready for STEADFAST RANGER.

- The Hinterland Team

Hello community,

The team’s been hard at work since the holidays, which we used to recover from finaling the massive December “Redux” release, and it’s time to update you on some of the things we’ve been doing in the meantime.






The team’s been working hard on Episode Three this year. We’d started work on it in 2018 and then put it aside to finish up Redux and work through all the tech and pipeline improvements we wanted to use for the remaining Episodes of WINTERMUTE. One of the first things we did after coming back from the holidays was re-evaluate our plans for Episode Three scope based on the lessons we’d learned from building and shipping Redux.

A key lesson there was the importance of having enough gameplay and narrative content to “fill the space” of the game, to avoid the feeling of senseless backtracking or the world just feeling too empty, as it sometimes did in the 2017 Episode One and Two release. Building Redux provided a fresh perspective on how to better balance our narrative and survival experiences, as well as how to better write for narrative flow in our open-world survival experience. These key learnings let us review our plans for Episode Three to ensure we would hopefully avoid making some of the same mistakes we’d made in the original 2017 releases, which we weren’t super happy with (and nor were many of you). Based on how we feel Redux turned out, and how you also seem to feel about the improvements, we’re confident we’re on a much stronger path now.

Building Redux also showed us that the “ideal length” for a WINTERMUTE episode is about 5-7 hours. This gives us enough time to present a few interesting story threads, some compelling open-world survival gameplay, and enough narrative momentum to keep the story moving. It’s also an amount of content that feels substantial -- these aren’t throw-away one or two-hour experiences -- but they are compact enough that you can finish them in a weekend if you like.

In our original planning, we had considered building the episode around three major story “hubs”, each in a different region, but that episode would have ended up being larger than Episodes One and Two combined, and amount of content that just isn’t sustainable for our team size. Just the testing on an episode that big would be a hugely daunting task, nevermind populating it with enough interesting narrative and mission content to “fill the space”. The Redux knowledge has helped us focus Episode Three down to a tighter experience that takes place in a single region.



Therefore, Episode Three is the story of Astrid’s survival after escaping Milton, and takes place entirely in Pleasant Valley. As you probably know, Pleasant Valley is a *huge* region, with a lot of scope for interesting environments and some great story moments. We’ve been updating the region to freshen it up for the story, while adding some new landmarks and locations that are introduced in Episode Three. I’m really excited about how it’s all coming together, particularly in how true to Astrid’s character and background the episode is.




As you know, hitting publicly announced release dates has never been our strong suit.

As an independent studio without a huge marketing machine behind us, we count on our relationship with our community to be positive so that you’ll help us spread the word about the work we’re doing. We know we harm this relationship when we promise to deliver things to you and then, for whatever reason, they fail to happen.

Unfortunately, project planning and game development as a whole is not an exact science, and while we are ready to work really hard to hit our goals, I’m not willing to crunch my team to do so. In order to be more fair to the community, and also more fair to the development team, I think the best approach for us is to refrain from offering any more public release dates.

So, moving forward, we won’t publish release dates around any of our content, whether that be full Episodes or Survival Mode updates. We’ll keep working towards internal deadlines, of course, but we won’t share news on when we plan to ship updates until those updates are essentially finished. That way, when you hear a release date from us, you know it will happen.




One of the things we’ve been working towards this year, with the development team, is hiring enough people with the right skills to be able to create two separate teams -- one to focus on Survival, and the other to focus on Story. We’ve made some great progress towards that goal and we’re getting very close to having all the people we need to accomplish that. Once we’re there, it’ll become easier for us to make consistent progress in both areas of the game, so that we can ensure a more steady supply of free Survival updates, as well as ensuring the Episodes get the resources they need. We still have a few positions to hire for to have full redundancy across both teams, but I’m hopeful we’ll get there within the next few months. If you know any great developers with experience crafting memorable and award-winning interactive experiences, please send them to our careers page!




Last year, we put a ton of effort into Redux and solidifying our foundation for the future Episodes, so this year we’re working to get back on track with producing more frequent Survival Mode updates. To that end, we’re working on a bunch of new features and content for the 2019 Survival releases. As per my earlier point about release dates, we won’t be sharing any tentative release windows for the next Survival release, but I will say that we’ve already done a fair bit of work on the new systems and content that will comprise the core of the next free update.





A few things we’re working on for the next Survival update include:

• Adding the Revolver to Survival Mode.
  
• Overhaul of the aiming mechanics for the Rifle, Bow, etc., to do a better job of integrating Fatigue and the breathing cycle, and making aiming less frustrating.
  
• Adding a new Food item.
  
• Adding a new Clothing item.
  
• Fixing the Sprains system.
  
• ...and more!
  

One feature I can confidently say *will not* be added in the next Survival update is the Bear Spear. This has turned out to be much more challenging to integrate well into the core Survival experience, so we’re taking a bit more time with it to make sure it’s a solid and promising addition to the Survival toolbox. It will eventually make its way into Survival mode, but it won’t be ready for the next update. And speaking of the Spear, we know that some of you [SPOILERS!] have been finding the Spear gameplay in Episode Two to be quite frustrating, particularly the last section in the Bear Cave, so we’re working on improving that. We’re also hard at work on a new Survival region, but that won’t be ready until (most likely) the update *after* the next one.

As you know we always like to keep a few surprises in our back pocket, but everything will be outlined in detail in the traditional Update Video we launch on update day. If you aren’t already doing so, it’s not a bad idea to subscribe to the Hinterland YouTube channel so you get notified when the update video goes live.






In a previous dev diary I mentioned that we’d been able to get our hands on the motion-capture gear from Capcom Vancouver’s now closed dev studio. We’ve been using the equipment and we thought you might like to catch a glimpse of the current set-up; this image is from the camera test we did to check out 18 of the 36 cameras. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space in our current studio to set up all the cameras, but we’re looking for some overflow space so that we can set up all 36. In the short term, we’re going to remove the built-in desks and set up the gear in-house so that the animation team can very quickly and easily iterate on narrative scenes or gameplay animation in support of our Survival and Story goals. The animators whipped up this simple little animation to show you how well it works -- all told this took about an hour or so to shoot and integrate. It’s only a quick test and obviously not something we’d ever ship, but it’s fun as a proof of concept and, let’s face it, Jeremiah has some sweet moves worth sharing.








We get a lot of questions about when The Long Dark will be brought to the Nintendo Switch. As you may know, we spent some time last year trying to get the game up and running on Switch devkits and ran into a lot of performance issues.

The latest version of Unity -- which we’ll be rolling out as part of our next Survival update -- does offer some performance improvements (which should also make the Xbox and PlayStation versions of the game run more smoothly), but we still don’t find the Switch performance to be at an acceptable level yet. We’re going to keep working on it alongside our other priorities, but I want to set reasonable expectations around this -- not every game can run well on the Switch, and if we’re not able to get The Long Dark running at a level of performance and visual quality that I’m happy with, we won’t be shipping it. All that said, I’m still hopeful that we can find solutions to the current issues, and we think The Long Dark would be really compelling on this portable platform, so we’re not giving up!


*****

Thanks for reading this update, and if you’d like to share your thoughts about the contents of this developer diary, I hope you’ll take a few seconds to join the official The Long Dark community, as well as following us on Twitter. If you haven’t already done so, and you’d like to be kept up to date on project announcements outside of general development updates -- for example, sale events, new merchandise, and information about the studio -- please consider signing up for the Hinterland Newsletter. And if you’re interested in more regular, bite-sized responses to community questions, make sure to check out the (almost) weekly Milton Mailbag.

See you where we see you!

- Raph